21st Century Cures Act: Impact on Hospitals

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The new law,
signed by President Obama just recently, focuses on key initiatives intended to
improve access and treatment for various kinds of care. Experts say healthcare
execs need to work closely with a variety of medical professionals – e.g.,
pharmacists, physician leaders, EHR vendors and IT employees – to use the law’s
new provisions to make changes that improve patient outcomes and hospital
performance.

Hospital outpatient departments that were under
construction before Nov. 5, 2015 are now exempt from Medicare pay cuts
scheduled to happen under the new Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS)
in 2017.

CMS must now take patients’ socioeconomic status
into account in the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Programme. Experts
say this is especially beneficial for hospitals that treat poorer patients, who
often have issues with access to care and other resources that negatively
impact their health.

For long-term acute care hospitals, delay until
1 October a rule penalising hospitals that receive one-fourth or more of their
referrals from a single source.

Hospitals may have more alternatives to drugs
and medical devices available over the coming years, which could help with the
rising costs of medications.

The new law
authorises the feds to set aside $1 billion over two years for initiatives
designed to prevent opioid abuse, and an additional $4.8 billion over the next
decade for biomedical research, including $1.8 billion to fight cancer.

In addition,
the Cures Act allocates $500 million for the FDA to speed up its process for
approving drugs and devices, increase patient participation in approval
efforts, and streamline reviews of products that are both drugs and devices.

Health IT Updates

The
legislation places focus on several areas of health IT – most notably,
interoperability for electronic health records (EHR) systems. It requires EHR
developers to use open application program interfaces (APIs), which makes it
easier for systems to be customised for individual hospitals and providers. EHR
vendors also have to test the interoperability of their systems in real-world
environments. In particular, vendors have to guarantee that
they won’t block communications between other EHRs.

Other
IT-related reforms include exempting physicians who primarily practice at
ambulatory surgery centres from the requirements of the revamped
"Meaningful Use" programme and allowing documentation by scribes to
qualify under EHR requirements.

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